ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Insect Sci.
Sec. Pest Management
Influence of egg traits on parasitism by Trichogramma chilonis Ishii, 1941 and Telenomus remus Nixon, 1937 against Spodoptera frugiperda (J.E. Smith, 1797)
Provisionally accepted
- 1Agriculture and Forestry University, Bharatpur, Nepal
- 2National Research Council Nepal, Kathmandu, Nepal
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Trichogramma chilonis Ishii, 1941 and Telenomus remus Nixon, 1937 are the most common egg parasitoids of fall armyworm (FAW), Spodoptera frugiperda (J.E. Smith, 1797) in maize growing areas. FAW lays single to multilayered eggs which are covered with degrees of scale. Here, we assessed the parasitism of these two parasitoids over different FAW egg densities (single layered), egg mass coverage (multilayered), and the ages of eggs. Two laboratory experiments were conducted from May to November 2022 under controlled conditions (24.3 ± 0.8 °C, 69.3 ± 2.2% RH). The first experiment, using a three-factor complete randomized design (CRD), involved two egg parasitoid species, single-layered eggs at three densities (20, 40, and 60 eggs), and three egg age groups (less than 12 hours, 24-36 hours, and 48-60 hours), each replicated three times. The second experiment involved two parasitoid species, multilayered eggs with three egg scale covers (fully covered, partially covered, uncovered), and three egg age groups, each replicated three times. T. remus exhibited significantly higher parasitism rates than T. chilonis in both single-layered and multilayered eggs. T. remus parasitized all egg groups uniformly while T. chilonis struggled with fully covered egg masses. Parasitism percentage decreased with the age of the host eggs in both the species. T. remus showed a higher adult emergence percentage, which was unaffected by egg scale covering but declined with increasing host egg age. The percentage of female progeny and development period were similar for both parasitoid species but decreased as egg density and egg age increased.
Keywords: fall armyworm, biocontrol agent, Parasitism, egg scale covering, Egg age
Received: 19 Nov 2025; Accepted: 13 Jan 2026.
Copyright: © 2026 Giri, Pokhrel and Bhandari. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Kushal Giri
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